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Fast Food Protests: The Five Most Prominent Myths Dispelled Myth: It’s about raising wages. Fact: Kendall Fells, the organizing director for Fast Food Forward (the group that established the Fight for 15 campaign) was caught on video saying: “To be clear, this is not a minimum wage campaign. These fast food workers are not trying to raise the minimum wage. They want to sit down with the $200 billion dollar fast food industry and get the money out of their pockets and negotiate a union contract with them.” The SEIU uses issues like the minimum wage to approach workers…

Today, Worker Center Watch released a new video detailing how OUR Walmart manufactures their petition and protest numbers on BlackFridayProtests.org. In previous years, OUR Walmart has made similar overinflated claims regarding the size and scope of actions, as well as the number of participants. It’s been well documented in the press that OUR Walmart protestors are induced to participate with gift cards, and the vast majority are not actual employees but union members or professional protestors (view the Daily Show’s expose of the UFCW’s tactics in similar campaigns).

While members of the Metro Council deliberate the merits of a minimum wage increase, Louisville residents should know that the lead group advocating for the increase, Kentucky Jobs with Justice (KYJWJ), has less than altruistic motives. A closer look at KYJWJ reveals that the organization is part of a national network of union-backed groups spanning the country under the Jobs with Justice banner. JWJ chapters, like KYJWJ, focus their efforts on localizing issues important to organized labor’s overarching, national agenda, and national unions fund and support these groups to create the illusion of a spontaneous groundswell of local, grassroots activism….